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For the past few months we have been very quiet, we haven’t blogged and we haven’t really been that active outside our office. The reason? We’ve been hard at work on an enhanced edition of our game Among the Sleep.

Among the Sleep was originally an experimental student project turned into a commercial video game. It’s a game that has helped define us as a company, and also a game that has helped finance our studio and our upcoming projects. Among the Sleep touched people’s hearts and the overwhelmingly positive response has inspired us to explore other narratives and gameplay elements - as we are doing right now with our upcoming game Mosaic.

But Among the Sleep was also a mess. The transition from ambitious, artistic and - to be fair - a bit of a naive student project into a commercially viable video game was turbulent and challenging. Even though the game has been a critical and commercial success for us we were never really 100% happy with the end result. Stuff was left out, stuff was half-fixed and compromises were made.

That’s why we decided to take a few months this summer and revisit Among the Sleep. We are older now and more experienced. We’ve used that experience to enhance the game in a lot of ways. We have improved the graphics, we’ve added dialogue we felt were missing and we’ve tweaked and altered gameplay elements. The whole game experience has been improved and the final game now feels more professional, more complete and more immersive.

We also wanted to add some extra stuff for the fans. So we’ve added a whole extra museum level that let’s you explore behind the scenes of the main game. In the museums exhibits you can even find the original ending of the game which - we’re a bit embarrassed to emit - is pretty terrible. Oh, and we also put in a few extra pajamas for the protagonist so that you can explore in style.

Among the Sleep probably wouldn’t have been made if it weren’t for the fans and you guys who backed the project. We are extremely grateful for the support from each and everyone of you that supported our Kickstarter ages ago.

This enhanced edition of the game is both for the existing fans and hopefully for some new fans. We hope you will take the time to revisit Among the Sleep in this new and improved version.

I repeat, we have received the physical rewards! :D We have art-books, CDs, Collector's Edition and regular edition of the game, and of course the t-shirts <3

It really is an amazing experience having all these in our hands. It feels surreal and thrilling. Can't wait for you all to get your hands on them!

Artbook

Regular Edition of the game and artbook

We have a lot of stuff :D

We will start sending them out next week. It will take some time arranging it all, so please be patient with us for a little while longer <3

We will update you all when everything is shipped!

Important: If you have moved address since the pledge and have not sent us a mail about it earlier (and gotten confirmation that it has been edited) please send us your updated mailing address. This is for those of you that pledged for a physical reward :)

Some of you may have heard that we have discontinued the VR implementation for Among the Sleep. We made a full DK1 version but that made us realise our game didn’t make a good fit for VR.

A huge focus when creating Among the Sleep was to make the player feel like he or she was controlling a small child. To accomplish this we spent a lot of time on camera movement. We wanted to simulate the way children waggle when they walk, their perspective and movement when crawling. We made climbing animations simulating how small children climb, we made the player fall over occasionally when running because, you know, that happens to small children.

All of these techniques are essential to project the feeling of being a child to the player. They make the player feel small, fragile and vulnerable. But unfortunately they don’t work in VR. They can create motion sickness with the dissonance between your body and what you see, it feels forced, like someone is holding your head.

We are very sorry to disappoint those of you wanting a complete, high standard commercial VR-experience. As a young studio (we started developing Among the Sleep while we were still in school) we jumped at the opportunity to explore new tech and didn’t think about limitations. We have learned a lot in the years since then and as a studio we would much rather be honest with our players about our shortcomings and what we have learned than keep on stalling and promising stuff we know we can’t deliver. We thought we could do it, we thought it was a natural fit but we were wrong and we’re sorry.

We are now considering using assets from the game for a smaller and more focused VR-demo. A tight and focused experience tailored for VR. It will be a small part of the game, stand alone from the rest of the story, but a much better VR-experience than the original game forced into virtual reality.

We absolutely want to underline that this is the only stretch goal we are editing. You have gotten the DLC, you will get the commentary track and everyone that backed the relevant levels will get their physical rewards. Games, t-shirts, art books, and CDs will be delivered to you. The rewards are in production and we will give you the word ASAP when they are being shipped. We just have to apologize again for the time this is taking.

Ending with some good news! We recently won an award in Hamburg for Among the Sleep! You can read about it on the blog. This would not be possible without you, so thank you very much from the bottom of our hearts! <3